Often when we watch footage of hurricanes and floods on television, we feel sympathy for those affected but it’s quite a different thing when it happens in your own backyard. Being a Floridian, I’ve lived through several and have been fortunate enough to escape with little or no damage to my home, and none to myself or any family or friends.

Most people in New Orleans weren’t quite so lucky when Hurricane Katrina roared through in 2008. The local government was overwhelmed and they got little assistance from the feds. With people in immediate danger of their lives, a call went out for all boat owners to assist with the rescue of those trapped in or on their homes. Thus, the Cajun Navy was born.

So-named because many of those who responded were from Cajun Country – southern Louisiana – they have since remained a loose confederation of men mostly from Louisiana who answer the call when major storms cause flooding. Not only do they act as a kind of ad hoc rescue organization, they also serve to deliver supplies to areas cut off by flood waters and to assist local agencies and the National Guard, although their help isn’t always welcome.

The group doesn’t receive any significant funding and subsists on donations. The men involved are not compensated and have to take time away from their own lives, businesses, jobs and families to mount these rescue operations. It’s dangerous work; although there isn’t any record of any serious injury or death in the Cajun Navy, often the floodwaters are tricky and hard to navigate; some rescue operations also require them to put themselves into harm’s way.

This documentary, airing on the Discovery Channel tonight with available on their online streaming service Discovery Gothereafter (also available in app form on most mobile systems), follows members of the Navy as they head to Wilmington, NC in the wake of the massive 2018 Hurricane Florence. As one of the men notes, they aren’t needed to rescue people from country club estates’ it’s those who are poor, or suffering from mobility issues who are most at risk. Some don’t have the wherewithal to relocate even for a few nights; some lack the ability. There are always a few who simply don’t take the warnings seriously, or refuse to leave their homes even if they do.

These guys are all salt of the earth sorts, men who work the land, who work with their hands and who hunt and fish as a way of life. Sometimes we tend to think of Southern men as ignorant MAGA-hat wearing hicks who are racist and misogynist. While we don’t get into the political inclinations of these men (I’d be willing to bet there are some Trump voters among their numbers), they really do put the “good” back into good ol’ boys and they might change a few stereotypes along the way. Their creed is that they rescue anyone or anything that needs it, regardless of whether they have money, the color of their skins or who they voted for. They even help rescue livestock; a life, as one man puts it, is a life.

One of the more poignant and anger-inducing segments involves a rescue set at a nursing home where the administrator refused to let those in his charge leave even as the flood waters were rising. He told the Navy volunteers they didn’t have the authority; that meant nothing to them. People like that administrator are consigned to a special place in hell, putting money ahead of the lives of the elderly in their care. He’s lucky a family member didn’t show up later and beat him senseless.

Some of the footage here is nothing short of incredible. Most of it is suitable for all ages, although there is a segment in which Carlton Boudreaux, one of the original members of the Navy, is rescuing some livestock in rural North Carolina. An alpaca has ingested too much flood water and despite the best efforts of the ranch owner the animal who is clearly suffering has to be put down. Although the mercy killing takes place off-camera, that may be a little tough for the kids to watch.

It isn’t often that we see documentaries that show us this kind of sense of community. Navy founder Jon Bridgers points out that it’s easy to say “it’s just stuff; you can always replace it” until it’s your stuff. In an era where neighborhoods have disintegrated and people live in places surrounded by people they don’t take the time to know or interact with, it’s somehow comforting to know that there are people who take the word “neighbor” seriously and are willing to look out for those in need. The world needs more people like the Cajun Navy and they might just change your mind about the South.

REASONS TO SEE: This might change a few stereotypes about Southern men.REASONS TO AVOID: Lacks any commentary from civic authorities who might have a different viewpoint about the Cajun Navy.FAMILY VALUES: There is some peril and one difficult scene in which one of the men is forced to put an alpaca out of its suffering.TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although estranged at the time of filming, Carlton and Lisa Boudreaux have since reconciled.CRITICAL MASS: As of 7/23/19: Rotten Tomatoes: No score yet: Metacritic: No score yet.COMPARISON SHOPPING:The White HelmetsFINAL RATING: 8/10
NEXT:Miracle Molecule

Regret follows us through life like the shadow of a hawk paces a wounded groundhog. The road not taken sometimes is the road we should have taken – but once we make that turn, that off-ramp is gone for good.

Susan Morrow (Adams) is the curator of an art gallery who has just opened a new installation, involving overweight, middle-aged naked women dancing suggestively in pom-pom and drum majorette outfits. It has brought out all of the shallow, self-involved, condescending L.A. art whores. In other words, it’s a great big success.

Not so successful is her current marriage to Hutton Morrow (Hammer), a venture capitalist whose venture has overwhelmed his capital. The failing business has put an intense strain on the marriage, for which hubby compensates for by fooling around. Men!

Out of the blue, Susan gets a manuscript from her first husband Edward Sheffield (Gyllenhaal) whom she had surmised was teaching college and had given up on the writing career that had attracted her to him in the first place. Their break-up was about as brutal as the end of a relationship can get. Now he has written a novel and dedicated to her, claiming in a note that she inspired him to write this – even though their marriage ended nearly twenty years earlier and they hadn’t spoken since.

As she reads the manuscript, she is oddly affected by it. It is a brutal story of a somewhat mousy man named Tony Hastings (Gyllenhaal) driving down a dark deserted Texas road with his wife Laura (Fisher) and daughter India (Bamber) when a quartet of Texas rednecks run them off the road. They finagle the wife and daughter into his car after repairing the flat tire on it and drive off with her; Lou (Glusman) drives Tony off into the desert and leaves him there. Later on Lou returns with the gang’s leader Ray Marcus (Taylor-Johnson) who try to entice Tony back but he hides in terror. They drive away.

Tony makes it back to civilization and calls the cops. The laconic Texas Ranger-type detective Bobby Andes (Shannon) takes over the case. Eventually they find the nude corpses of his wife and daughter, dumped near where they had dropped off Tony. Andes promises that they will get the guys who did this.

As the years go on, the dogged Andes eventually figures out who done it but Andes has a bit of a time sensitivity going on – he is dying of cancer. It is unlikely that based on the fairly flimsy evidence that they have that Ray Marcus and his gang will ever be brought to justice. That leaves revenge, but does the weak Tony have the stomach for it?

There are three distinct stories here – the novel, which takes up most of the movie and is a kind of Texas noir; Susan’s current story in which her life is filled with disappointment, regret and sadness, and the back story of Edward and Susan – how they met and how they broke up. All three tales are put together into a cohesive whole and show that Ford, who is better known as a fashion icon, is also a marvelous storyteller.

This is not an easy role for Amy Adams, who is so lacquered up with make-up that she almost looks like art herself. It isn’t one of the most emotionally forthcoming performances of her career, which makes it all the more impressive; she does an awful lot with an awful little here. Gyllenhaal continues to make a case for himself as being one of the most distinguished actors of our time. There is a great deal of nuance in his performance; his character is perceived as weak but he isn’t in the traditional sense. There is a strength that comes through particularly later in the film.

There are also some stellar supporting performances. Shannon as the crusty detective is all tumbleweeds and BBQ brisket as the Southwestern law man, while Laura Linney is virtually unrecognizable as Susan’s patrician snob of a mom. Both of them dominate the screen when they are on, Linney unfortunately for merely a single scene.

The ending is deliberately vague and will leave you with a WTF expression on your face. My wife and I had decidedly different reactions; she loved it and thought it perfectly suited the movie. I felt that it was inconsistent with how the character behaved and felt petty and vindictive. I also had problems with the opening credits that played lovingly on the nude women; it felt exploitative to me.

Ford, who made his Oscar-winning debut with A Single Manmay need to dust off his tux again come February but this is less of a slam dunk than his first film. I think that there is a possibility that there will be some Oscar consideration here, but there is some heavy competition coming its way despite this having been a fairly down year for Oscar-quality films. How the Academy reacts remains to be seen, but this is definitely a must-see for those who want to make sure they get an opportunity to see every film that is likely to get a nomination.

REASONS TO GO: Ford deftly weaves three different stories together. The film boasts fine performances from top to bottom.REASONS TO STAY: The opening scene and ending are absolute deal-killers.FAMILY VALUES: There is violence, graphic nudity, a pair of offscreen rape-murders, menace and salty language.TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Focus paid $20 million for the distribution rights for the film at Cannes, the highest ever paid for any film at any festival to date.CRITICAL MASS: As of 11/29/16: Rotten Tomatoes: 82% positive reviews. Metacritic: 67/100.COMPARISON SHOPPING:The WordsFINAL RATING: 7.5/10NEXT:Stagecoach: The Story of Texas Jack

It is often the most idyllic countryside that is the most remote. Those places that are for the most part unspoiled by modern society seem to be the most beautiful. They can also be the most dangerous.

Zina (Ivanisin) is an amateur model who is very much aware that she is no longer in demand and that the time for career success as literally passed her by. Unpopular with her fellow models for her no-bullshit attitude, she is honest to a fault and sometimes pisses off people with her straightforward opinions. She goes out for a night of drinking with three other girls who also dabble in modeling at a bar that can only charitably be described as a dive, but one of the girls likes the home-brewed liquor they served, all of it coming out of bottles with a curious whorl pattern on the label and nothing else. The ladies gossip amongst themselves until Zina is accosted in the unisex bathroom and has to resort to kneeing the guy who won’t take go to Hell for an answer right in the family jewels.

The next day she has a photo shoot with veteran photographer Blitcz (Cavazza) who also brings ditzy Mia (Rozman) for the outdoor shoot. They are joined by make-up artist Dragica (Ogorevc) who is a former model herself. They head out to a meadow way in the boonies of Slovenia and one has to admit, the location is beautiful but not so well-chosen; they are in short order approached by Francl (Sparovec) and Vintlr (Drevensek), two inbred redneck types whose country bumpkin look belies their sinister intent. They manage to overpower the four of them and transport them to a basement.

It turns out that these two yokels are moonshiners and their liquor is very special – it is distilled from the essence of fluid extracted from the human brain. It is an extremely painful process and one that is fatal to the person unlucky enough to be distilled, so to speak. Zina realizes after one of their number is brutally bludgeoned to death in front of her that they will all die if she doesn’t find a way out of the basement, but beyond it there are miles of forest that her captors know well – and she knows not at all. It will take all her wits and will to live to survive.

I wasn’t expecting much to be honest; I admit I’m not terribly familiar with the Slovenian film industry and I had my doubts that this would be anything more than a Grade Z cheapie. Instead, it turned out to be a suspenseful little action-packed gem with some pretty decent performances, particularly from Rozman and Ivanisin and some pretty spectacular gore effects that would do a big-budget Hollywood film proud.

The movie is pretty much divided between spectacular outdoor shots in the countryside and cramped, claustrophobic interiors. Both look pretty darn good, although some of the interiors are a little too dimly lit. Still, the last twenty minutes or so which is essentially one long chase scene is almost all outdoors and done with extreme effectiveness.

There isn’t a lot of sexuality here, although the ladies are gorgeous and one of the inbreds does seem like he’s going to rape one of the models midway through the movie but for the most part sex here is almost all unwanted by the ladies which makes for some interesting psychology. There is also a clear urban vs. rural divide here that hearkens back to classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and House of 1,000 Corpses that clearly have influenced the work here.

The behavior of the models with the exception of Zina is pretty much shallow and irritating, so some viewers having to listen to Mia prattle on interminably might get a little bit done with her before the film is done with her but she is dang pretty to look at. There is also a ton of smoking in the film; I found it somewhat amusing that all the gorgeous models smoke like chimneys but the horribly mutated hillbillies do not.

The effects make-up on Francl and Vintlr are also pretty nifty; Francl has a bulbous nose and a sunken right eye with pock marks and pustules turning his skin into a teen’s worst nightmare, while Vintlr has an elongated face, teeth only a Brit could love and also his share of skin issues. Both of them are about as ugly as you can imagine and while I wish there would have been more use of Mia’s shallowness about good-looking guys be laid bare by her revulsion to the spectacularly ugly country boys, the monsters here are satisfactory, although as things turn out, the worst monsters might be the ones who look normal.

In any case, this is in Slovenian with English subtitles but it’s well worth checking out, particularly this time of year. It’s a really fine film that you’ve never heard of so if you’re looking for something a little different to push your fright buttons this Halloween, this is truly a find you might appreciate.

WHY RENT THIS: It’s a surprisingly well-made film that cranks up the suspense in the last 20 minutes. The locations are beautiful.WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Some of the acting is a little bit over-the-top. Some of the shallow behavior of the models might be irritating to some.FAMILY VALUES: A fair amount of gore and violence, some profanity and sexual situations.TRIVIAL PURSUIT: This is the first full-length horror film to be produced by and in Slovenia.NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: Not available.SITES TO SEE:Amazon Prime, VimeoCOMPARISON SHOPPING:The Hills Have EyesFINAL RATING: 6.5/10NEXT: Day 2 of Six Days of Darkness!

When we see the homeless, we tend to view them as failures at life. They are scary in a way, as despair and desperation can drive people to do terrible things – and we sure don’t want to be around when they do.

Buck (Blane) is an eight-year-old boy who’s been through much more than any eight-year-old boy should have to. Both his parents were killed in a car accident and he and his little sister Molly (Raye) have been separated and sent to different foster homes. Whereas Molly is in a loving middle-class home, Buck has been left in the tender care of George (Wiggins), a brutish man who never tires of telling Buck that he’ll never amount to anything, or pointing out he’s been kicked out of every foster home he’s been sent to.

Driven past the breaking point, he escapes George’s clutches, leaving him with a present he’ll remember for a good long time. He decides to go out looking for his sister, but hasn’t a clue how to find her. Living on the streets and eating out of garbage bins, he finally attracts the notice of Joe (Baker), a kindly man who is also homeless.

Joe takes Buck to a camp outside of town where other homeless people are living as best they can. Joe teaches Buck the ropes and imparts the wisdom of how to survive on his own. Still, Buck is focused on finding his little sister and despite Joe’s warnings to the contrary, goes out after her. The attempt will lead Buck into a life and death situation, one in which he must make a decision that will color the direction his life takes from then on.

First-time filmmaker Gaillard filmed the movie in and around Columbia, South Carolina using friends and family as actors and crew members. Taking into account the nature of the production, it has to be said that this is definitely unpolished; the acting is uneven, as such productions usually are. However, this doesn’t feel like an amateur film. The cinematography is gorgeous, utilizing its locations nicely, and the script rarely descends into cliché.

Blane is a credible young actor; he takes the less-is-more route, rarely overplaying his hand. The result is that he comes off as a boy who is in a bit of a shell, but capable of violence when cornered. Simply put, Buck is not a kid to mess with. Blane gets that across, but manages to retain the inner core of a child. Many better known child actors wouldn’t have been able to pull that off. If he chooses to pursue acting as a career, he has a bright future in it.

Baker (not the special effects make-up guy) is the wise old Yoda to Blane’s Luke Skywalker. He plays a very complex character that is homeless by choice, rejecting the money-centric society that America has evolved into. Baker even resembles a Jedi with his snow-white hair and ponytail. In any case, he is the film’s heart in many ways and carries that aspect off solidly.

Quite frankly, I was pleasantly surprised with the movie that depicts how the homeless are perceived by society in a very realistic manner. There are a couple of rednecks in the movie (Hanley and Garick) who precipitate a good deal of violence. Some of the violence is sudden and brutal in the manner that violence often is. Sensitive souls should note that while the movie isn’t gore-drenched, it doesn’t shy away from it either and the violence that exists in that stratum of society is dealt with in a matter-of-fact manner.

The movie is a slice of life of lives that are often marginalized; that it depicts these people as human and worthwhile is a unique feature all of its own and should be applauded. It is a bit of an eye-opener as a matter of fact, and these are the kinds of movies that should be appreciated and savored. While it is exceedingly difficult to find the movie in local theaters, I would highly recommend ordering the movie from the website below. Talent such as Gaillard’s and his cast and crew should be nurtured and encouraged; I suspect that Gaillard has plenty of additional stories to tell and I for one look forward to seeing them.

REASONS TO GO: While very raw, the movie depicts the life of the homeless and how they are regarded by society in a very realistic manner. The movie is well-filmed, utilizing its locations very nicely.

REASONS TO STAY: The violence can be off-putting to those who are sensitive to such things.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some violence and a smattering of foul language. While the lead character is a young boy, it would be advisable to watch the movie with your children to answer questions about the situations and the ensuing violence, some of which is directed at the boy, others committed by him.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Before making this movie, Gaillard had no movie-making experience and knew very little about the process. He read several books on the subject at his local library and checked out information on the Internet before purchasing a camera and putting together the funds to film the movie, mostly with friends and family.

HOME OR THEATER: This film is on the festival circuit and your best bet is to see it at one; if you can’t find it, the movie is available on DVD at its website www.iremembermovie.com.

Sequels can be very problematic. They’re almost never as good as the original, and when you throw in that it’s the sequel to the reboot of one of the classic horror series of all time, things get even more dicey.

Halloween II picks up where Zombie’s reboot left off, with Laurie Strode (Taylor-Compton) being pulled out of the house in an ambulance, while serial killer Michael Myers (Mane) is being carted off to the morgue, courtesy of a gunshot to the face by Miss Strode. However, you can’t keep a good serial killer horror film franchise down and Myers turns out to be not quite dead yet, escaping the ambulance that is transporting him to the county morgue when the unlucky ambulance hits a cow. Hey, Haddonfield is farm country don’tcha know.

He shows up back at the hospital where Laurie is being treated – a hospital that seems unrealistically understaffed – and hacks a few people to death, particularly a nurse whom he seems intent on pounding into hamburger. He corners her in a guard shack and – voila! – She wakes up from a dream. Actually, the sequence was an homage to the original Halloween II which took place entirely in a hospital. Zombie serves notice that this isn’t gonna be your pappy’s Michael Myers.

It’s two years after the events of the first film (although, strangely, the theatrical release portrayed it as being one year, but what’s a year between fiends) and Laurie is now living with Sheriff Brackett (Dourif) and his daughter Annie (Harris) who was the only other survivor of the Michael Myer’s previous Halloween rampage.

Halloween is approaching once again and Laurie has been beset by strange dreams. She confesses to her therapist (Kidder) that she’s concerned for her sanity, but she has no idea what kind of shellacking her sanity’s in for. That’s because Dr. Loomis (McDowell), Michael’s therapist from the first film, is on yet another book tour and in his new book he reveals that Laurie is actually Michael Myers’ sister (and Darth Vader is their father…but that didn’t make it into the movie). Since Laurie wasn’t aware of it, she goes bonkers and storms out of the Brackett’s happy home which is bad news for Laurie but good news for Michael, who is coming out for a family reunion, egged on by the Gothic ghost of his mom (Zombie) and the specter of his younger self (Vanek, taking over from Doug Faerch who had a growth spurt and became literally too big for the role).

All of this means there’s going to be mayhem in Haddonfield on Halloween, complete with strippers getting their face jammed into a mirror numerous times, a bouncer getting his head squashed in by Michael’s brogans, a couple of rednecks finding out the hard way why it is a very bad idea to mount antlers on the front of their pickup and a whole mess o’ carnage too disturbing to get into here.

There’s no doubt that Zombie is a visionary director – The Devil’s Rejects proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt as one of the best horror movies of the last decade. However, he seems oddly hamstrung here, which might have been due to the incredibly tight filming schedule (something which he mentions in the commentary track) or perhaps due to his own reluctance to do a sequel which he changed his mind about at the last moment, leading to said tight schedule. Either way, the movie doesn’t live up to most of his other work and has to rank as a disappointment.

That’s not to say it’s totally without redeeming qualities. For example, the violence here is excessive and realistic. When Michael Myers plunges the blade into a body, it is with full force, punctuated with an animal grunt. While that might make some queasy, it truly does work within the context of the movie and brings a new dimension of realism to the proceedings.

Where the movie doesn’t work is in the endless psychobabble that Zombie sees fit to insert, trying to get at the core of what drives Michael Myers. Now while I’m all for attempting to get inside the head of a serial killer, it gets a little too artsy fartsy for my way of thinking, with his mom showing up as a kind of Goth chick ghost in flowing white robes, accompanied by a white horse. It derails the oeuvre of the movie and takes audience right out of the mood.

He goes out of his way to make Laurie Strode shrill and unlikable. While this may be a realistic way of depicting someone who’s been through the kind of ordeal she has, what it also serves to do is alienate the audience from identifying with the heroine and that’s just bad juju. If the audience thinks the heroine is a whiny bitch, they’re not going to care what happens to her and if they don’t care what happens to her, there’s no reason to see the movie other than to watch Michael Myers carve up the citizens of Haddonfield and environs.

I also have to comment on the set design which is often incomprehensibly busy. Laurie’s room looks like the inside of a mental hospital cell, with a huge poster of Charlie Manson and spray painted graffiti reading “In Charlie We Trust.” This in the home of a town sheriff mind you. Apparently Rob’s sense of realism and mine differ by quite a bit, so we’ll just leave it at that. In any case, you wind up with sensory overload in quite a few of the scenes, focusing in on the minutiae of the set design that you almost lose track of what the filmmaker’s trying to get you to notice. It kind of works at odds with Zombie’s vision.

I’m a big fan of Rob Zombie and the Halloween franchise both, so it is with a great deal of regret that I have to give this a poor review. I really, really wanted to like this movie and I just flat-out didn’t. While there is a third movie in the rebooted franchise slated for release next year, Zombie won’t be a part of it which may well turn out to be a good thing for both Zombie and the producers of Halloween – Zombie took an enormous amount of crap from the horror film fandom for this movie, much of it undeserved (for example, Michael is unmasked for much of the movie which many fanboys found to be sacrilegious) but some of it justified. I’m hoping his next project blows me away. This one didn’t do the job.

WHY RENT THIS: Some very effective scares, and a lot of insight into the background of Michael Myers. The violence is brutal and realistic.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: The set design is a bit of a mess, often so busy that it distracts from what’s going on onscreen. The plot meanders and gets a little too murky with the symbology.

FAMILY VALUES: The violence here is particularly brutal which works for the movie but may be difficult viewing for sensitive souls. There is also a good deal of crude language, female nudity and much sex. For teens there are scenes of teen drinking and implied drug use. All in all this is not for kids or for most teens.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Tyler Mane becomes only the second actor to play Michael Myers in more than one film (George Wilbur is the other one).

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: There are six music videos from the fictitious band Captain Clegg and the Night Creatures. There are also some standup comedy performances from Jeff Daniel Phillips, a blooper reel and audition tapes.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $39.3M on a $15M production budget; the movie made money.

I’m not the target audience for this movie, not by a long stretch. I’m not a big lover of country music, although I do admire the relationship between the performers and their fans. However, my neck is not nearly red enough to really immerse myself in country culture.

Toby Keith doesn’t have that problem. His neck is as red as the American flag…the white and the blue probably appear elsewhere on his person too. He drives a Ford pickup. He sings songs about drinking and raising hell. Good ol’ boy? Goddamn, he’s a good ol’ MAN. If you shoot him with anything lower than a .45, the bullets just bounce off.

He plays Rack Racklin, a fun-loving Oklahoma sheriff whose girlfriend Cammie (Gershon) has just taken a powder. Don’t worry, though; his ex-girlfriend Annie (Forlani) is back in town and you can tell they’re destined to be together because she’s totally less bitchy than Cammie although their names rhyme, sort of.

Rack arrests Tito Garza (Serano), a Mexican drug kingpin who has been bringing in meth that is turning the little town into a crap factory. Tito’s brother (Sanz) doesn’t like that much, and kidnaps Annie so that he can trade her for his brother – after which he’ll shoot anything white that isn’t floating in a tequila bottle. Mexicans are ornery that way – just ask Toby Keith.

The sheriff (Skerritt) wants to play it cool but Rack isn’t taking no for an answer. He rounds up his best friend, Deputy Lonnie Feldman (Carrington) and the silent but deadly bowhunter Skunk (Nugent – yes, that Ted Nugent) to head down to Mexico and save the girl. And shoot some Mexicans. For a redneck, that’s a party.

Where do I start? Keith is amiable enough as the lead. Most of the first part of the movie is a light-hearted comedy, but it turns into Rambo about halfway through and more or less stays there until the last scene. The change isn’t particularly smooth and it feels like you’re driving a Ford F-150 with transmission problems on a dirt road with lots of potholes. Once the movie gets to Walking Tall, Keith seems a bit lost as the tough guy.

The comedy is just plain bad. Carrington is actually an excellent performer, but here he seems to have gone to the Hee Haw school of acting and his character of Lonnie seems to have come straight out of an episode of The Dukes of Hazard. I don’t think I even broke a smile at a single joke.

There are some pretty good actors in the movie but one gets the feeling that they took one look at the script, cashed the check as quickly as they could and phoned in their performances. There’s no energy and no life visible anywhere in the movie. It’s just a bunch of actors going through the motions or at least it appeared that way to me. Maybe it was just a bad day, but even Da Queen, normally much more generous to actors than I am, was begging me to turn off the movie.

Nope, I stuck through the whole thing and the strange thing is there really is a movie in here somewhere, just not this one. I think that given the right material, Keith could be a movie star the same as Tim McGraw is now. Unfortunately, this isn’t the right material for anyone. Except for maybe the Nuge. He only gets to say two words (for the record, the two are “Circus Jolly” at the end of the movie) and the rest of the time, he just shoots things with his bow, the riff from “Cat Scratch Fever” coming on every time he cocks his weapon. That’s pretty much how I’ve always imagined Ted Nugent to be.

WHY RENT THIS: Ummm…ummm…I’m thinking…no, that’s not it.

WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Poor script, poor acting, and poor pacing…it’s just not all that good.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s a bit of violence, some crude language and humor, brief nudity and a little bit of drug content. Probably safe for most teens and mature kids.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Although set in Oklahoma (and the Jackson County shoulder flashes for the deputies are authentic), the movie was actually filmed in New Mexico.

NOTABLE DVD EXTRAS: None listed.

BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $666,045 on an unreported production budget; I think it’s safe to say the movie lost money.

When zombies take over the world, the remaining humans will have to adapt to not being the dominant species on the planet anymore. They will have to be ruthless, tough and pitiless. In other words, they’ll have to become assholes.

The movie is narrated by Columbus (Eisenberg), a somewhat timid nebbish attending the University of Texas in Austin who is trying to return home to Ohio to see if his parents are all right – not so much out of concern but out of curiosity since, as he repeatedly tells us during the movie, he and his parents aren’t close.

An early encounter with a comely neighbor (Heard) who becomes zombiefied leads him to develop a series of rules for survival. I won’t go over all of them but they are accompanied by graphical representations that become part of the action in amusing ways. He meets up with a redneck zombie asskicker who calls himself Tallahassee (Harrelson) because he doesn’t want to get attached to anybody by learning their real names, so he assigns everyone – including himself – a designation based on their eventual destination.

Tallahassee has several quirks, most notable of which is his single-minded obsession with Twinkies. He looks for the golden snack cakes everywhere he can, without success. On one such venture into a grocery store, they meet Wichita (Stone) and her little sister Little Rock (Breslin) who turn out to be con artists, stealing their firearms and their wheels.

After finding a hummer loaded up with big guns (“Thank God for rednecks” exclaims Tallahassee), they go out in search of the girls who robbed them and find them – only to get duped again. However, this time the girls allow the boys to come along. They’re headed to Pacific Playland, an amusement park just outside of Los Angeles which is reportedly zombie-free. Wichita confesses that she knows it’s unlikely but she wants to give her sister a chance at being a child one last time.

They crash at the mansion of Bill Murray only to find the great comedian fully human and in residence. He is dressed and made up to look like a zombie, mainly so he could go out and play golf. Columbus is starting to fall for Wichita, but both are wary of getting close to anyone in a world where death is around every corner.

This is the kind of movie that is going to achieve cult status relatively easily. It’s full of sight gags and plenty of gore. Better still, it has a sense of its own hipness and is chock full of easily memorable lines that teenagers across the country are going to be crowing back and forth to one another, either in person on school grounds or on social networking sites. I wonder how many “It’s time to nut up or shut up” statuses are going to be seen in the next couple of weeks? I’m sure some dweeb somewhere is counting.

Eisenberg plays as a kind of Michael Cera lite throughout although he does break away from that persona every now and again. However, it’s Woody Harrelson who steals the movie as the redneck with the big time Twinkie Jones. He’s amusing and his timing is dead on (we sometimes forget that he got his start on “Cheers”). He has more depth to him than any of the other characters and being the veteran actor he is, uses every bit of it to flesh out his role (pun intended).

Unfortunately, the girls are little more than afterthoughts, particularly Breslin who is criminally underutilized. They have almost nothing compelling about them and quite frankly, the movie could very easily have done without them. Basically Wichita is in the movie to belabor the point that Columbus is a virgin (and how often will I ever get the opportunity to write lines like that?) and as attractive as Stone is, she never quite captures the attention onscreen as ladies like Megan Fox have been lately.

My son saw an early screening of this movie and proclaimed it as the funniest movie of the year. I was a bit skeptical myself, until I saw a scene where the Jesse Eisenberg character was depicted hunkered down in his apartment on a Friday night, playing Worlds of Warcraft and drinking Mountain Dew Code Red. In other words, pretty much one of Jacob’s Peeps.

This is definitely a movie for rednecks; at the screening we were at there were a couple of loud and obnoxious ones sitting in the row ahead of us. Jethro and Bubba’s commentary was completely unnecessary and further illustrates why Mystery Science Theater 3000 wasn’t recruiting from the Dukes of Hazzard crowd.

The movie is reasonably entertaining and director Fleischer shows a lot of imagination and promise. This was meant to be an American answer to Shaun of the Dead and while it isn’t completely successful at least manages to take some potshots at a few American sacred cows. I was a bit more taken by it than Da Queen was and a bit less in love with it than my son was. It’s decent entertainment and for the most part, as long as you don’t mind gore and poo-poo humor, you won’t walk away from the multiplex feeling you wasted your ten bucks.

REASONS TO GO: Fleischman shows some promise, with clever graphics and plenty of violent things done to the undead. Woody Harrelson takes this movie in hand and shows that while he has been a character actor in recent years, is very capable of carrying a movie on his own. The midnight movie hipness quotient is off the charts.

REASONS TO STAY: The female characters are totally unnecessary and Eisenberg continues to remind me why I find Michael Cera so annoying.

FAMILY VALUES: There’s plenty of gore, horror violence, foul language and some sexuality; in other words, not for kids.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Tallahassee writes the numeral 3 on the side of all his trucks during the course of the film as a tribute to the late Dale Earnhardt.

HOME OR THEATER: Load up on the pork rinds and Budweisers, settle back in your recliner and be prepared to slow-mo all the parts where the zombies are blowed up real good. Give me a Hell Yeah! No, a Hell Yeah, not a Yeehaw!